


Broken

by ceasefire



Category: DRAMAtical Murder
Genre: Body Horror, Emetophobia, Gore, Guro, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Necrophilia, Psychological Trauma, Robot/Human Relationships, Robotics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-06 21:19:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1111645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceasefire/pseuds/ceasefire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aoba thinks he can repair Clear alone, but soon he realizes that he's breaking himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken

**Author's Note:**

> Oh god I am so sorry.
> 
> Had this idea for ages and realized it'd never be as good as it was in my head on paper, so I wrote it down quickly in one shot.
> 
> Um. Happy new year?

The walls around Platinum Jail had crumbled from the tremors caused by Oval Tower's collapse. Hundreds of people were running through the rubble, up and over and into the inner area of Platinum Jail, curiosity desperate to be sated. Occasionally Aoba would feel the touch of another person as they ran by closely followed by a rushed apology, but he ignored it all and continued on his way. Halfway up, he lost his footing and he felt the weight on his shoulders shift and begin to slip. Panic ran through his veins, but he managed to take hold of his burden before it hit the ground. He held on for a moment, desperate to embrace. Clear's lifeless gaze stared back at him, his expression frozen on the same peaceful smile. Aoba gritted his teeth and placed Clear securely back over his shoulders.

Clear's body seems lighter this time around, as if something that had been there before was now gone. Aoba knew it wasn't anything he'd left behind at Glitter; he'd picked up every scrap of skin, every loose nut and bolt that he'd been able to find. Anything at all that would give him a better chance of success, he'd picked it up and stowed it away in his bag, wrapped up securely in his jacket. Clear's exposed parts were digging into his skin without the extra padding, but he refused to do anything to ease the pain.

He didn't want to believe it was something he could not replace.

Aoba's legs ached and burnt from exertion as he reached the end of the maze of rubble, the buildings of the Old Residents District finally coming into view. Feeling his energy suddenly renew, he held onto Clear and began to jog towards home, legs weak beneath him.

Soon he could focus on the real task at hand.

* * *

Aoba took time off work and holed himself up in his room, resenting it as the expressions of those around him turned from relief to confusion to genuine concern. This wasn't something he needed help to achieve; he could do it all on his own if he applied himself, and it wasn't too long before he'd convinced himself that Clear would have wanted it this way, too.

At first, it was a simple matter of finding out what parts went where. There were parts of Clear that weren't nearly as badly broken as others, and he was able to use them as a guide. Every single moment of minor improvement was a success. A part that matched a certain other part, a bolt the right size for a certain empty hole in the dark steel frame, a sliver of skin that perfectly matched a tear elsewhere on Clear's body. Aoba felt renewed hope with every surface abnormality that he could fix, but he knew the real problem lay deeper inside.

At one point as he idly tinkered away at a jagged broken bar that must have served as a rib, he recalled something Granny had said to him about her time as a nurse: it was easier to think of bodies as a machine with parts that needed fixing or removal, rather than thinking of them as a living being with people who cared about them.

When he went down for dinner later that night, prompted to do so only by his grandmother's insistence, he told her that she'd been right about something she'd said years ago. The only response he received was a worried look, and so he turned his attention to his meal and ignored it.

* * *

Did he really think of Clear as human?

It took a long time and a lot of bad days that involved little to no progress for these thoughts to seep into his mind. He didn't know how long it'd been since Platinum Jail now -- he'd stopped keeping count when his failures began to become too much for him to deal with.

Sometimes he thought that if he truly thought of Clear as human, he wouldn't look at his body as something fixable after this amount of trauma. Of course the mortality of human bodies could be stalled, but it was impossible to think that they would be able to have life breathed back into them after such terrible wounds and such great passing of time.

Death was a part of human life. There were said to be five stages of grief that people experienced in mourning: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. At the start, Aoba had sometimes felt that he was stuck on the first stage. With the passing of time he'd felt every other emotion but the final one of acceptance, and he knew he would never reach it as long as Clear's body was what it was.

Mechanical. Not human.

At times, he felt like giving up. Giving up was not acceptance; acceptance meant overcoming grief, and giving up meant it had overcome you. But then he'd remember small things like Clear's smile, one of the strange things he did, the way he'd show such pure emotion and love and affection and say every word from the bottom of his heart.

Those were the things that helped him see Clear as human again.

* * *

He'd been careless, overtired. A slip of the hand had set him back on hours of work, and the destruction his carelessness had caused had left some part of Clear's body leaking oil, dark and pungent and staining Aoba's skin black. His breath had come short, his head had throbbed and bile had risen so fast in his throat he barely made it to the bathroom before he was throwing up.

A few minutes to clean and contain himself and he was back in his room.

Clear was sitting up against the wall as if nothing had happened, dark fluid still oozing out through the terrible wound down the side of his body. Gritting his teeth and choking back emotion, Aoba pressed his hand into the slick wound and found the cause of the leak, edges of the puncture hole smooth beneath his fingers. He drew the tube out through a gap between Clear's ribs and patched the hole up, trying to stop himself from shaking as he did so. Once the job was done, he walked back to the bathroom and cleaned himself up, washing the oil down the drain and scrubbing until his skin was raw and free of dark stains.

These were the times he turned to Clear for comfort.

When he went back to the room, the first thing he did was lay his head down on Clear's lap, take his metallic hand in his own and reach up with one hand to slide a finger into the key lock wound on his head. Just inside and to the left his finger hit a part with more give than the others, and Aoba managed a shaky smile as he felt Clear's cold fingers tighten their grip.

He'd discovered a lot of these little things by accident as he'd experimented with Clear's mechanics, and he gave a weak laugh as he let Clear's fingers flex slowly against his own. A little further down and out was a smooth metallic cog wheel; he caught one of the teeth of the wheel with the corner of his fingernail and laughed as one side of Clear's smile grew more vibrant, almost to the point of being too ecstatic to be real. Clear's skin bulged out irregularly next to his jaw from the pressure of Aoba's touch and the placement of his fingers.

"Idiot," Aoba said between laughs, breathless and full of daring as he pressed his fingers in deeper and upward, wet sounds emerging from the wound as previously unbroken parts were moved and separated by his movements. His finger slipped over something that gave way easily. He circled his finger around it repeatedly and paused to see the effect it would have on Clear's body, only to have a mixture of nausea and arousal pool in his stomach as he noticed the growing bulge in Clear's pants.

Aoba gasped and pulled his finger free of Clear's flesh with a sickly wet noise. He considered his actions only for a moment, eyes fixing on Clear's face with its blank stare and strangely lopsided smile.

Swallowing against the lump his throat, he untangled his fingers from Clear's and raised his hand up to gently shut his one good eye, while reaching for the zipper on his jeans with the other, his own cock already hardening in anticipation.

"Clear?"

No response.

"... I'm sorry."

* * *

It really was just like a human's.

Aoba's hand shook as it worked slowly over Clear's cock, and he marveled at how lifelike the skin felt under his palm, how there was still just a tiny hint of warmth to the flesh. His other hand, cleaned of oil and slicked with spit, worked slowly in and out of his ass. He savored the feeling of being touched like this -- he hadn't done it since the time in Glitter, since Clear's final request -- and it felt amazing despite the pent-up, desperate tension in his body. It seemed like Clear's arousal had been a mechanical reaction after all, Aoba thought as he carefully smeared a droplet of precum across the slit with the pad of his thumb.

But didn't the reaction have to be triggered by something in the first place to actually happen?

Aoba paused for a moment to consider this, shook his head and removed his fingers from his ass, kicking off his jeans with a shake of his head to clear his thoughts. He couldn't dwell on that now.

... It hurt as much as the first time.

That's all Aoba could think as he kneeled over Clear's cock and bore down, taking the entire length into his body with desperate speed that made tears of pain bead at the corners of his eyes. He kept moving despite the pain, tolerated the uncomfortable pressure until he ground down in a way that caused heat to rush through his blood and his breath to come short.

"Clear..." he whispered under his breath, cheeks flushed as he curled his arms tighter around Clear's shoulders and held him closer. Soon he slipped one hand down between their bodies to stroke his own erection; it only took a few firm strokes before he was coming, semen spurting between their bodies and dirtying his hand as his muscles clenched around Clear's cock.

He lifted his hips to let Clear slip out of him, his cock still erect and slightly dirtied with blood thanks to Aoba's haste. Once Aoba caught his breath, he reached for his discarded underwear and cleaned both of them off with it, smiling weakly as he leaned in to kiss Clear with finality.

"Clear, I... I love you."

Of course, there was no reply. The longer Aoba waited, the more the silence sickened him, the more his own actions drove hot, sick guilt directly into his head and heart.

He redressed as quickly as he could, fixed Clear's clothing and tore the sheets off his bed. Carefully, he wrapped Clear's body in them and dragged him over to the nearby closet to hide him, to stop him from staring at him as he slept. A soft metallic sound echoed through the room as a loose part came free from Clear's body, but Aoba ignored it.

He shut off the light and lay down on the bare mattress, bringing his knees up to his chest.

He was a terrible person, undeserving of what he would have if he did succeed in repairing Clear.

And that was beginning to look less and less likely with every passing day.

Aoba let out a shuddering sigh and let the tears he'd tried to resist fall freely down his cheeks.

Clear's humanity was real, and it had finally succeeded in claiming his hope.

* * *

The next day, Aoba awoke to his granny barging into his room, pulling back the curtains covering his window and dragging him out of his room.

"Stop it," Aoba murmured, his desire to resist faded to the point of barely existing any longer. Tae shook her head, glared and took him down to the kitchen. A hot cup of coffee and a plate of food was already sitting ready for him at his place at the table, and Tae pointed to his chair.

"Sit. Tell me everything."

Aoba hesitated for only a second before taking a deep breath to calm his doubts and fears.

Perhaps this was the help he'd needed to accept all along.

"Granny."

"Hmm?"

"... please help me."


End file.
